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30 Under 30: Kickboard's $2 Million Series A Fuels Momentum In Ed-Tech

FORBES 30 Under 30 alum Jen Medbery, founder of the web-based school analytics platform Kickboard, announced today that her startup has closed a $2 million series A round, bring the total fundraising to $2.8 million and underscoring continued optimism in the ed-tech space.

Kickboard was developed in 2009 as a tool for teachers to make better decisions in the classroom based on reliable data on each student. The problem? Teachers and schools don’t often effectively communicate and analyze the information they know about their students, each one instead relying on his or her individual grading system.

Medbery, a former software developer, high school math teacher and Teach For America alum, built her business on the theory is that no classroom is, or should be, an island unto itself. Kickboard allows educators, administrators and parents to enter and access real time information on a single platform, facilitating better communication and, hopefully, better, more personalized education. The teacher-friendly software is now used by 200 schools in 20 states.

One look at Medbery’s colleagues on the 30 Under 30 Education list makes it clear that Kickboard is not a lone crusader in hoping to unlock student data, Always Prepped and ClassDojo are working on solutions for tracking behavior and facilitating communication. And if the tremendous investor interst in Nic Borg’s Edmodo is any indicator (a whopping $40 million in venture cash at last count), Kickboard is 100% in good company.

The 29 year old founder is optimistic about what today’s investment announcement says about the ed-tech landscape for other entrepreneurs. Of fundraising, she says, “Investors who have deep knowledge of the space were decidedly optimistic,” noting New Market Venture Partners, which invests primarily in education, as a particular champion. “Other investors were cautiously optimistic, if it’s not a cop-out to say that. They want to believe the education market is shifting and barriers to sales and adoption are receding.” The $2 million milestone for Kickboard, she hopes, will prove those beliefs and continue to fuel the momentum in education technology.

“In many industries, thoughtful, user-conscious analytics and visualization of data can be incredibly powerful,” said Colin Beirne of Two Sigma Ventures, who led the round with New Market Venture Partners in a statement today. “Kickboard puts actionable real-time data at the fingertips of teachers and school administrators to better enable them to fine-tune their instruction and management, and ultimately better fulfill their school’s mission. As strong believers in the power of data to drive insight and results, Two Sigma Ventures is proud to support Kickboard’s efforts to build strong, healthy schools where teachers and students thrive.”

Medbery says the round will be used to expand the New Orleans-based Kickboard team and invest further into product development, particularly better dashboards for teachers that offer new and unique ways of visualizing student performance. “In a performance based culture,” she says, “It is imperative that teachers, students and families have greater visibility into all elements of student performance so that they can take informed, decisive action and improve student outcomes.”

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